“A Souvenir of Japan”
One of the stories that Carter wrote which is highly influenced by her two-year stay in Japan following the separation and eventual divorce from her husband in the wake of winning a prestigious literary award. It is assumed to be much more autobiographical than her later more famous works in its relatively straightforward tale of an affair between a British expatriate and a young Japanese gentleman. While no trekking in her later universe of reinvented fairy tales and history, it does plant the seeds of her pervasive exploration of gender convention and expectation.
“The Loves of Lady Purple”
Appearing in the same collection as the above story, this tale is strikingly different as it throws the reader directly into that later universe of the weird and perverse for which Carter is known. Framed as a story-within-a-story about a puppeteer putting on a performance, the nuggets of Carter’s postmodernism is also on display as the frame story bleeds into the inner tale in this bizarre examination of a vampiric prostitute trading in sadomasochism becomes the puppet before regaining her human form again at the expense of the puppeteer.
“Penetrating to the Heart of the Forest”
Also in the same collection is this story which provides glimpses into two themes which would dominate Carter’s short fiction: revising familiar stories and deviant sexuality. The familiar story is that of Adam and Eve and the deviation here is that that they are brother and sister alone together in an Edenic forest who have only each other to turn to when they become sexually awakened.
“Master”
“Master” combines many of the familiar thematic elements to come: on one level it alludes to Robinson Crusoe while at the same time drawing from aspects of colonialist “great white hunter” stories. Gender issues are examined through the empowerment that rape gives the hunter’s female slave to turn the tables and extract revenge.
“The Courtship of Mr. Lyon”
Wordplay. The “Mr. Lyon” is actually the Beast in this retelling in which Beauty is the daughter of a man whose car breaks down outside Mr. Lyon’s estate. This really is a retelling more than a revision as the story proceeds along its usual track toward the conventional happy ending.
“The Tiger’s Bride”
The revision of Beauty and the Beast occurs in this story in which Beauty has been lost in a game of cards to “Milord” who turns out to be a tiger. Unlike the courtship in which Beauty’s love transforms Mr. Lyon back into a handsome prince, in this version Beauty transforms into a tigress. A happy ending, but quite different from the source inspiration.
This revision of the legend of Bluebeard treks along the same narrative path as the inspiration, but takes a thematic left turn by revealing that the soul corrupted by both sexual and economic lust is not limited just to the husband in this perverse image of marriage.
“The Company of Wolves”
Like the bride above, Red Riding Hood is here transformed into something a bit less innocent. Though not a corrupted soul like the bride, she is an image of empowerment through sexual awakening. Recognizing her grandmother for the wolf he is, it is she who seduces and devours him.
“The Werewolf”
The revelation here is that the title character is the grandmother in another revision of Red Riding Hood. This revelation results in the grandmother being stoned to death and her granddaughter collecting her inheritance. The reader is left with a sense of ambiguity about whether the incident was entirely accidental or not.
“The Kiss”
An imagining of the building of a great mosque to honor Tamburlaine the Great by his wife. She commissions an architect who falls in love with and agrees to finish construction if she will kiss him. An argument over the vitality of such a kiss ensues, a plot to ply her with the liquor plays out, a kiss occurs, Tamburlaine returns and domestic abuse produces a confession and an order of execution for the architect. Fortunately for him, he grows wings and flies away.
“The Fall Rivers Axe Murders”
These axe murders are more commonly and familiarly known to most as the Lizzie Borden case. This story recounts events in the time leading to the never-solved ax murders of Mr. and Mrs. Borden. Although the sing-song rhyme convicted Lizzie of the crime for eternity, the real-life jury of her peers did not. As such, Carter’s examination of the notorious crime is really an analysis of the nature of narrative and storytelling which exists not necessarily for the purpose of seeking the truth.
“Lizzie’s Tiger”
This is another story about Lizzie Borden, but her last name is not revealed until the closing line. Rather than focusing on the infamous unsolved murder, the story is all symbolism in its tale of a very young girl named Lizzie at the circus whose encounter with a tiger is not intended to be taken literally, but as a metaphorical moment of empowerment.
